Hello, does anyone know of a service that salvages data from a broken external hard disk in the Geneva - Lausanne region?

I have quite a bit of important data on it any would really like to get to it...
Any help/advice will be greatly appreciated.

Also, sorry in advance if this is not the right part of the forum for posting this question.

Kroll OnTrack will probably do it (http://www.datenrettung.ch/) - for a price.

They have quite a quick turnaround usually.

Expect to pay around 2000 CHF if it's a difficult case.

But they will be able to salvage most data, if it's physically still on the disk and theoretically readable.

Thank you, I will contact them in hope that the price will not be as steep as you had said.

How broken is broken? Have you tried fitting the disk into a new caddy?

It started by losing contact whenever i touched it while plugged in, untill it finally stopped being recognized by the comuter at all.
It does still light up when i plug it in, and it still does make some noise as if it was working, but not being recognized by the computer.

It is a Seagate Freeagent Go external hard disk, and so I am notr sure what my options for changing the caddy are. I have taken it out of the housing (pretty much killed the housing) in hope that there might purely be something wrong with the usb socket, but all is still the same - light and sound, but not recognized.

External HDs are notorious for eventual failure and nothing short of clean room work will potentially recover data (There are no guarantees in data recovery services)...It's a laborious & costly process

There is one other option you can try. Although the computer does not recognize the drive, right click on the computer icon and select 'manage'.
then select data storage. can you see the external drive present..probably as drive 1 or something like that? if so, try right clicking on it, and then re-map it to another drive letter. see if that works.

If you can see the drive, but unable to change the drive name, perhaps download a free 'file recovery' program, this may do the job.

good luck.
CB

Hi,
Is it a 2.5 or 3.5 inch external hard disk? I do happen to have an adapter to read external hdd for 3.5 inch and connected to pc with usb. Where in Vaud do you live? If you have a PC try connecting it as slave and change master/slave jumper on hdd, it might work.
I can lend you the adapter if you like.

Check this link for what i have
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...952&CatId=3770
PS: Dont have e-sata cable...

Cheers

The chances are that you've got a faulty usb socket (or cable - you did try with another cable didn't you). It certainly fits the symptom. The bit storing the data is the same regardless of whether the HD is internal or external. A new caddy, will simply involving removing the HD from its casing, and then plugging it into the new one. It's very simple. (Unless Seagate have done something like Apple did with the ipod, where they used a HD that you could only by in units of ten wholesale).